


Move Like You Stole It

by VillainsAlwaysWin



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers, Art Critic!Leonard, Criminal!Mick, Eddie and Iris are in college, F/M, Kinda, Lisa is just about done with their antics, M/M, Professor!Caitlin, Professor!Cisco, Skater!Lisa, Songfic, Soulmate AU, Student!Eddie, Student!Iris, professor!Barry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-26
Updated: 2016-07-26
Packaged: 2018-07-18 10:27:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7311250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VillainsAlwaysWin/pseuds/VillainsAlwaysWin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(Soulmates - Killerwave Week 1 Day 7)</p><p>Caitlin didn't believe in soulmates until hers came knocking on the classroom door. Literally. He came through the door and snuck out the window without her even seeing him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Move Like You Stole It

**Author's Note:**

> In this universe, Soulmates can write things on their arms (or really, any part of their body) and it will transfer to their soulmate's body but they can still see it on their own. Most people use this to find their soulmates. Once the two have met, eye contact and all, the only writing that they can see on their arms would be their soulmate's.

Caitlin believed in science, not soulmates. Science was predictable, reliable and in a world of metahumans, reliable was what she needed. There was a reason she wasn’t a modern science professor like Cisco Ramon, or a Metahuman 101 teacher like Barry Allen.

Still, at the end of every semester, she had to cover the basics of soulmates and how they fit into science. It was her least favorite unit – especially when she started getting questions from rowdy college students about her own soulmate.

“Miss Snow,” they’d ask. “Have you found your soulmate? What are they like? What kind of things do they write on their arms?”

Those were the worst types of questions to her because for one, they had nothing to do with the lessons she taught, not really, and she had no real answers for her students. No, she hadn’t met her soulmate so of course she doesn’t know what he’s like. As for what they write on their arms, well. What he writes on his arms tells her all she wants to know about him.

Most people write dates – important appointments, birthdays, vacation dates in case their soulmate wants to come find them. Others just write messages, hoping for just one message to come back, or for someone to finally scribble _found you_ on their wrist.

(Barry was that kind of person. Of course he found his soulmate earlier than normal – an art critic named Leonard Snart, go figure.)

Caitlin is part of the small group that doesn’t write things on their arms for their soulmates. She’s a professor – she writes memos to herself all the time, or during a particular boring finals week, wrote a bucket list. She doesn’t care whether or not she finds her soulmate because of a lunch date she wrote on her arm, and her soulmate doesn’t seem to either.

At first, she thought differently. Scribbles of times, places, dates appeared on her arms where her soulmate had written them on his. As time went on, she started noticing just what those dates and times corresponded with. Robberies – bank, museum, any kind of chain store, and once an outdoors store where the only thing stolen was a couple of lighters. Her soulmate wasn’t trying to meet her – he was just writing things down so he wouldn’t forget.

It was the reason she always wore long sleeves. She didn’t want to see where he was going to rob next – and she never thought she’d actually be crossing _accessory to robbery_ off the outrageous bucket list Cisco had made her write – and she didn’t want people to ask questions about why she wasn’t meeting her soulmate at the address on her wrist.

All in all, she was perfectly content single – or at least if she wasn’t, no one would ever know.

And of course, when she could finally admit to herself that maybe, _maybe,_ she wasn’t content with her lonely life, that she wasn’t content with the cycle of _teaching grading sleeping drinks with the other professors_ , that’s when it all started.

She was teaching another sophomore class, most fresh out of Cisco’s lecture hall, when Iris West-Allen had to speak up. If Caitlin had learned anything from her friendship with Barry, it was that barely any of his family had a filter. They spoke their minds no matter what, and why would his sister be any different? She, like Barry, had found her soulmate but hers in another classmate, Eddie Thawne.

“Ms. Snow?” she asked from her seat in the second row. Most of the kids were taking the fifteen-minute break time to sleep, or finish an assignment due after class, but Iris always spent the time asking questions. She lived up to her dreams of being a journalist with that curious nature.

Caitlin looked up from the reports on her desk. “Yes?” she asked with a smile.

Only Iris and Eddie were looking up at her, hands intertwined under their desks like every class. “We haven’t got to that unit yet but…have you met your soulmate yet?” Eddie finished for her, in sync with Iris’ thoughts like a true soulmate couple should be.

She looked down at her arms, a habit she could never seem to break when someone asked her about soulmates. “No it’s fine,” she said after a moment. “I haven’t met my soulmate yet, but I’m not in a hurry to.”

“Why not?” Iris asked. “Everyone thought you and Professor Stein’s last intern were soulmates.”

Ronald Raymond, Professor Martin Stein’s first intern before his current Jefferson “Jax” Jackson. Being with him was the closest she’d ever felt to what people described as soulmates. They might not have had a neural link, but they knew each other enough to where people assumed that they were actually soulmates. He was one of the best things that had happened to her, but instead of staying in Central, he’d been transferred halfway across the country.

They’d tried to have a long distance relationship, and it worked for almost two years, but he had wanted her to move in with him all those miles away, and she just couldn’t do it. She couldn’t leave her makeshift family here – Team Flash, they called themselves, after enough Jitters meetings and all ordering the same type of coffee.

She couldn’t bear to leave Barry or Cisco. She was even warming up to Leonard, being that their first impression wasn’t very good – she had been trying to disarm a bomb the science department was working on, and he had been far from helpful. Barry had apologized many times, dragging his soulmate down there while they worked when he was only going to be a distraction, but as hard as she tried, she couldn’t hold it against either of them. As smart as Len was, he was far from the bomb squad.

She couldn’t bear to leave Iris or the rest of her students – or Cisco’s soulmate Lisa. They were the closest things to sisters she’d ever had, as much as they could and did disagree, and neither would ever consider leaving Central. Joe, Stein, Jax, and the rest of the college wasn’t even an option. So she had said no, and Ronnie had tried to persuade her, but before long, she’d lost contact with him.

The last she’d heard was that he was studying the possibility of wormholes.

“We – our relationship didn’t work out, but we were not soulmates.” She explained, a bit at a loss for words. “I am perfectly content without one.”

Iris smiled knowingly, like she was reading in between the words Caitlin was saying, but before she could say anything else, Caitlin’s class phone buzzed. “Excuse me,” she added, and turned back around to her desk to pick up the phone. It was Barry.

“Hey, Cait, do you think you could come down here for a minute? We’ve got a bit of a – uh – situation.” His voice rang guiltily over the line. She sighed. The last time she’d heard that voice was the bomb incident – which, why would the department even need a _bomb_ – and most likely Cisco had another crazy idea and he’d recklessly gone with it.

“I keep telling you Barr, I am not a doctor, I’m a science professor for Pete’s sake!” she exclaimed. It drew a few looks from her students and Iris started to laugh. No doubt she understood the utter exasperation in Caitlin’s voice. “Give me until the end of the class, and I’ll be down there, okay?”

Barry was silent for a moment. “Actually I think your lesson might have to wait. The situation is pretty important.”

She sighed, resigned, and hung up the phone. Turning back to the class, she noticed a bit of writing as her sleeve moved slowly up her arm. It was familiar silver print, her soulmate’s. All she could see without moving the fabric even higher up was a time. Even closing her eyes couldn’t keep her from seeing it.

_10:52._

Her eyes strayed to the clock on the wall. Of course she didn’t want to know when he would rob, or where – the location was always on her arm as well – but she couldn’t help but look anyway. She quickly looked up, then away, then took a double take. The clock – the clock read – the clock – she couldn’t comprehend it.

In one fluid motion, she pulled her sleeve up to stare at the messy silver scribbles. In the midst of her black writing and the blue numbers where Cisco had grabbed her arm to write down equations for Barry’s marathon training, was a location she never expected to see on her arm.

“Ms. Snow?” Eddie asked quietly.

“Caitlin?” Iris added on, and Caitlin barely heard when the younger woman got up to stand in front of her. “Caitlin, are you okay?”

Her soulmate – he was going to be in Barry’s classroom in less than ten minutes. He was in the same _building_ as her. She had already told Barry she would be over there to deal with whatever the problem he was having was; she had no choice but to go over there. She wanted to see her soulmate, but - “I’m sorry,” her lips formed the words without her permission, “Class is dismissed for today. I’ll see you all on Wednesday for the last review before the midterm, all right?”

Her students began to trail out of the room in groups, Eddie and Iris in about the middle of the crowd, Iris managing to squeeze Caitlin’s shoulder before being pushed out the door. She barely felt in in the midst of her thoughts.

Did she believe in soulmates? No. She believed in science. Science made sense. Science kept her sane, kept her from going crazy from thinking about everything in the world she couldn’t explain. Science was her job. Science was reliable.

Did she believe in soulmates? No. She believed in science. But as much sense as science made, it didn’t keep her heart from pounding, her hands from sweating, the metaphorical butterflies in her chest from fluttering around at the thought of the man that was supposed to be made for her – the man fate wanted her to be with – was just a few classrooms down the hallway.

Did she believe in soulmates? No. But she believed in her heart, and after the mess that was Ronnie, she deserved to at least see this man, see if maybe having a soulmate – as much as it didn’t make sense – could possibly dull the roar of loneliness in her heart. She had finally admitted she wanted more out of life than what she had now, but was this really the solution?

®

If there was one thing Mick Rory was good at, making deals would be it. Stealing things and landing himself in prison would be tied for second.

It wasn’t entirely his fault that he was a thief. Ever since his family had died in that fire when he was younger and he’d been stuck in that foster home, he’d been thrown on the illegal path he called his job now. He had needed money to keep living on his own, and no one would hire a man with a record like his, not even if he tried applying.

Len said something different.

The man had been one of the best partner’s Mick had ever had, at least before he met his soulmate in some college professor. He had been the first to get into Mick’s head, keep it clear long enough to do a job, not let the pyromania eat him up. He was the one to help Mick finally control the fire, so he could control when it burned and when it just simmered under the surface in waiting. He was also one of Mick’s best friends.

Then Lisa had decided to take her ice skating career away from Keystone and right back over to Central, and she met her own soulmate – strangely, one of the coworkers and friend of Barry Allen, that dorky professor Len had gotten tied down to. He’d become a damn _art critic,_ talk about ironic no matter how good the man was at it. Maybe he could spot a fake a mile away, but he was still one of the best thieves in Keystone, retired or not.

So Mick had been left to his own devices, no soulmate in his future to stop him from his own career and stuck doing odd jobs for the other criminals in Central, where he’d been dragged along by the Snart siblings. He had become a bounty hunter of sorts, trailing down people and bringing them back to his boss-of-the-day so they could get back money, valuables, whatever it was they wanted them for. He didn’t care as long as he got paid.

He’d gotten into the habit, ever since juvie with Len, to write down details of their heists in coded format on his arms. When Len left, and they’d all moved to Central, he’d stopped using the code almost the day after. He didn’t need it anymore, and no one would understand the writing in his sloppy handwriting anyway.

Of course, that was when he started noticing a different kind of writing on his arms. In between his burns and scars and messy scrawl was suddenly neat notes about lunches and birthday plans for someone he didn’t know and the dates of meetings with parents about kids failing a class he didn’t teach. Notes from his soulmate – notes that never talked about meeting up with him like he’d heard people tended to do.

Lisa always believed in soulmates. She had confided in him that she really had to, living with her father and the guilt of Len always protecting her. If she didn’t believe in soulmates, then how could she believe in a better future for the two – the three of them? She was one of the people who used her arms to talk to her soulmate Cisco.

Leonard was different. He believed in soulmates, yes, because it was the way he was raised. He didn’t believe that he’d have one, especially not one like do-gooder Barry Allen as Mick liked to say, but for as much leather as the man seemed to have in his closet – thanks to the weird track suits Cisco was always trying to invent – there didn’t seem to be a single mean bone in the younger man’s body.

Which was almost impossible – everyone had a dark side, just like the three of them. Mick was almost always on a mission to try and find Barry’s, but it was the hardest game of hide and seek he’d ever had to play since Lisa had grown tired of children’s games.

(needless to say, that had been quite a few years and Mick was starting to feel like Barry had caught on and was just playing him. He _was_ Len’s soulmate after all.)

Though the Snarts might believe in soulmates, Mick wasn’t sure on his stance. It was a nice idea – a person made just for him, someone who could keep him calm and bring out the fire at the same time, but he hadn’t met anyone like that yet. He didn’t have any kind of heroic side like Len seemed to have. He didn’t know how any part of him, especially his personality or career, could help better the woman who was supposed to be his better half.

The reason he didn’t really believe in soulmates was because he didn’t think fate was cruel enough to stick a nice teacher like the one who constantly wrote on her arms in that nice writing on a man with as low of a moral compass and as many burns on his body and mind as he had. Fate wasn’t a kind deity, he knew that, but he was better off never meeting his soulmate.

The problem was, Len had other ideas. Constantly helping Barry with his experiments in his class, the other man had done a lot of digging since he had found out Mick’s soulmate was a teacher just like his. Mick had thought that little bit of information was harmless – what could Len possibly do with it – but he wasn’t expecting for the man to come stomping in Mick’s apartment a few months after the move with Barry, Cisco and Lisa in tow and the news that he’d found Mick’s soulmate.

 He’d found Mick’s soulmate? That was ridiculous. There was nothing to say that Mick’s soulmate lived in Central, or any of the surrounding cities for that matter. Just because it would be convenient didn’t mean she lived in Keystone or Star. It couldn’t be that easy to find someone who he barely knew anything about!

But it was that easy. Barry had been happy to recall when Len showed him a picture of the handwriting on Mick’s arms – sneakily taking during one of Lisa’s performances, the bastard, he should have known – and how he had recognized it quickly as one of his other friend’s.

Caitlin Snow, Barry had said. She worked with him and Cisco, and Len had even met her a few times. She was close to Lisa, and she was another science professor. She lived in Central, _Central,_ and had been single for more than a year since her ex moved away. Sure enough, when they had showed Mick a paper she’d graded for Barry’s sister Iris who was more than happy to be involved in their scheme, it had been a match for the words currently on his arm.

That’s when Barry had started to prove, just a little, why he was truly Len’s soulmate, and came up with an elaborate plan to get the two of them to meet. Between the two professors, the plan wasn’t more than a blur in Mick’s mind – all he had to do was steal something – it was confusing, but impressive. It looked like he wasn’t the only one who was decent at cutting deals.

(If Lenny wasn’t taking this kid out on heists, he was missing out on the genius – moral compasses were always messing with potential, Mick thought with a sigh.)

And so, Mick warily wrote down the details on his arm, the time and the room number so he both wouldn’t forget and so Caitlin might see. The red looked out of place and familiar on his arms, next to the burns and the bright silver of his soulmate’s words. He thought that, maybe, it was a sight he could learn to enjoy.

®

When Caitlin finally brought herself to open that door to Barry’s classroom, she wasn’t fully ready for the sight. No, it wasn’t quite time yet, only 10:48, but close enough. What she saw wasn’t exactly her soulmate.

No, it was just what she had expected to see before she’d read the writing on her arm. Len, in the corner, that familiar smirk on his lips as he watched Barry try to clean up his mess and just making it worse, and Cisco trying to fix whatever the invention in the corner was that was causing the problem.

“What did you two do this time?” she asked with a sigh. “Cisco, you have your own class to teach. You didn’t need to be showing off more of your inventions for Barry’s marathon training. And – honestly, what is that thing?” Instead of the usual yellow sparks that surrounded their gadgets, always nicknamed the weirdest of things by Cisco, this one was spurting red liquid she could only compare to blood.

Lisa echoed her sigh from the classroom corner, reclining in one of the desks in the back near Leonard. Caitlin didn’t know exactly why she was in the room, but she figured it had to do with Cisco frantically calling her when he successfully got his Science! to work. He was almost as bad as their coworker Hartley.

“It was supposed to be a flamethrower,” she supplied. “Some kid brought it in to show ‘em, some fancy thing his father had improved, and those two dorks thought they could improve it even better.”

So the red liquid wasn’t blood. That was good to know. But if they’d called Caitlin in the room after one of these experiments, it meant someone was injured or in this case, probably burned. It was the same thing no matter how much she told them, no, she wasn’t a doctor, she obviously did not work at a hospital and most of her expertise to help with their wounds was thanks to Google.

“Okay, what’s the damage?” she demanded, rudely yanking Barry’s arm up from the mess of red and trying to separate skin and blood from what was leaking out. “Ugh, someone get me a towel. Sometimes I wonder why I put up with you two.”

“Talk about a _frigid_ bedside manner, Snow.” Len remarked from the back. “It’s a good thing you’re not a doctor.”

She spared a quick glare in his direction, and then dropped Barry’s arm before doing the same to Cisco’s. “Why am I here if no one’s hurt?” she muttered. “Barry, Cisco, what’s going on? And for – shut that thing off!”

They chorused, “Sorry, Cait!” both giving her sheepish looks, Barry’s the most effective like always, and jumped back over to the machine to try and shut it off. Now that she could take more than a quick look, it was more like a gun than a flamethrower. And it looked suspiciously like the match to an Absolute-Zero gun Cisco had tried to make a few months ago.

She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. When she opened them, there was an obvious lack of flamethrower in the room. She took another deep breath, and this time when she looked up, it was at the clock on the wall that read 10:54.

…what.

“Don’t tell me someone just stole that.” She said dully.  _because that would mean it was her soulmate that stole it._

Barry, now in the back of the room, grabbed Lisa and pulled her in front of him like a shield, trying and miserably failing to hide his laughter. Caitlin could feel a headache coming on, temple pounding as she looked away. No doubt Cisco was doing something similar if the resounding “Hey! That’s cold, dude!” and “Get over it, Goldilocks,” was anything to go by.

She turned on her heel and stomped out of the classroom, out the main doors to the Green, and yanked up her shirt sleeves again. The previous words had almost disappeared, now just a faint silver mark she had to squint to make out, and had been replaced with something else.

_It’s about time we met, doll._

That was it? She glared down at her arm. Her soulmate, a thief like always, had stolen the gun while her _eyes were closed_ and had left the vaguest message he could have possibly thought of to tell her after not even bothering to show his face to her. Sure, not everyone could have a meeting like Len and Barry’s, but she wanted one where she at least _saw_ her soulmate.

She looked up angrily, meeting the eyes of a few college students circled around some man she didn’t know, and sighed. Turning her gaze away, she grabbed the pen from her pocket that she’d stuck there absentmindedly that morning and wrote a message back.

_Don’t call me doll. You haven’t earned it._

The words disappeared from her skin, and her eyes widened. She hadn’t seen her soulmate – why were they acting like she had? She looked back at the students, noting the older man was gone. She’d barely looked at him, but she had looked into his eyes –

“I’m not givin’ back this gun,” a gruff, unfamiliar voice spoke from behind her. “You’re just gonna have to take it, soulmate, or show me somethin’ better.” After a second, he added, "And I like the name doll, doll."

She turned around to see the same man from before – and was that Len and Barry smirking in the background behind him, damn it – holding that gun against his hip. He was closer than she expected, and her foot slammed into the side of his boot, causing her to stumble and arms wrapped around his waist. She felt the cold metal against her back.

“Well,” she smiled sweetly and looked up into his – admittedly very handsome – face, “Feel free to keep it, _doll,_ I’m sure you can fully enjoy the fire on the way to Iron Heights.” She replied mockingly.

His mouth twitched at her words. “Fiery, just like Len said,” he replied. “I’d rather keep you.”

She opened her own to reprimand him for those words, before it hit her. Of _course_ this meeting wasn’t coincidental. No one had even been injured when they’d called her down to the labs. If anything was a giveaway, it should have been how almost her entire class was cheering at her, at how she hadn’t made a move away from those strong arms. And who did she know who wanted her to meet her soulmate more than she had?

She shook her head slightly, earning a raised eyebrow from her soulmate, and called over his shoulder to her friends, “The two of you are not getting _any_ help from me for Valentine’s Day shopping – I know you did this.”

There was a chorus of groans from behind them, as not only Barry and Cisco complained but also Lisa, the woman knowing she got those gold earrings more from Caitlin than she did her soulmate, given that his style was more Star Trek and Buffy.

“This is gonna be interesting,” her soulmate whispered into the curve of her shoulder, his voice vibrating down through her entire body. Oh yes, it would.

®

Did Caitlin believe in soulmates? No, she believed in science – but she just might learn to believe in them if she spent enough time with her own soulmate, because the best way to disprove science is with a  _lot_ of tests and she was looking forward to getting those results.

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, this is late for Killerwave Week.


End file.
